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I was recently invited to share my thoughts about my studio practice and current ‘zine project with Á.R. Vázquez-Concepcíon at the Cranium Corporation. We get into the origin story of my current body of work and how my personal history informs this. We also talk about the “magic of painting” and I am really not sure how but that phrase really did pop out as I responded to his question. Wee also discuss collage and my current ongoing book project mowa. I hope you will take a couple of minutes and listen!

Still Life for Jolene III, Acrylic, Spray Paint and Marker on Panel, 24in x 30in, 2016

Liquitex Research Residency Program

I am over the moon to announce that I have been selected to participate in the inaugural Liquitex Research Residency Program! Please check back for more updates.

From the press release:
Liquitex has partnered with Minnesota Street Project to provide four Bay Area artists fully funded residencies at 1240 Minnesota Street. Developed to support the creation, presentation and dissemination of contemporary painting practices, the residency aims to support emerging artists by providing work space, materials, resources, and engagement within the studio program at Minnesota Street Project.

…

Selected from a shortlist of emerging artists, Minnesota Street Project is honored to welcome:

Micah Wood
Erik Parra
Koak
Woody De Othello

Please note: The Liquitex Research Residency Program is annually awarded to a group of artists selected by a committee including figures from both the Project + Liquitex. The Residency does not currently accept unsolicited applications.liquitex.com

I am happy to announce that I have been included in a group exhibition entitled Framework: Elements of Architecture at North Seattle College. The exhibition opens Wednesday February 1, 2017 and will run though March 17, 2017. If you are in the Seattle area please stop by if you have time.

From the beginning of time, architecture has fed the soul through ingenuity and beauty, and has also functioned simply as a roof over the head. Both capacities have inspired the artists shown here today, as they find inspiration in the sculptural qualities of a building, in the principles of construction itself, or as a stand in for the body. Essentially, these artists articulate how architecture and structure can mix. In this gallery, you will find works that crosspollinate the building with it’s surrounding space, the past with the present, the interior with the exterior, and the impermanent with the fixed. Featured artists include: Dan Carrillo, Susan Gans, Monica Gonzalez, Kevin Haas, Myszka Lewis, Terrell Lozada, Sean Morrissey, Yoonmi Nam, Erik Parra, and Kim Van Someren.

state is pleased to presentIn The Same River Twice, by San Francisco-based artist Erik Parra. For his hometown, solo exhibition debut, the artist presents a new collection of drawings with a corresponding drawing installation, and new paintings with a corresponding painting installation. The work continues the artist’s line of inquiry into mid-century visual tropes and their intersection with the construction of the American Dream. The exhibition will be on view from October 15 – November 19, 2016 with an opening reception on Saturday October 15 from 6-8pm. The artist will be in attendance.

“If a man is never in the same river twice, how is he to know?”

This age-old philosophical statement is as much about self-reflection as it is about the constancy of change. In The Same River Twice delves into the correlation of the designed environment and failed utopias in order to examine the idea of the American Dream. The exhibition examines the stories we tell ourselves in order to navigate the structures we build.

Parra’s work centers on the the mid-century structure as a metaphor for the way major narratives about the “Greatest Generation” were shaped for public consumption. Through this lens of history, the artist aims to shed light on how decisions from the past have reverberated into our current social concerns.

Narrative unfolds through a language of pictorial construction where objects within each painted or drawn interior are chosen for their potential for symbolic form — simultaneously loaded and banal. For instance, the artist uses unassuming tchotchkes to symbolize major public undertakings (American Exceptionalism, The Interstate Highway System and the Egyptian pyramids), prompting a dialogue about our cultural roots.

With an intense formal play on perspective, the artist offers multiple levels of access points for viewers to engage with these interiors. Upon initial observation, living rooms make sense as nostalgic, yet inhabitable spaces, but a closer look offers strange vantage points and dueling perspectives generating menacing, alien environments.

To read Erik Parra’s artist statement about In the Same River Twice, please see>>

About Erik Parra

Erik Richard Parra was born and raised in the border metroplex of El Paso-Juárez. He received a Bachelors of Fine Art degree in painting from The University of Texas at Austin and completed a Masters of Fine Art while on fellowship at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Currently based in San Francisco, California, Erik has exhibited internationally in alternative spaces, commercial galleries and museums in Berlin, Brazil, Los Angeles, London and New York. In the Bay Area Erik’s work has been exhibited at Blankspace Gallery, Johansson Projects, The Headlands Center for theArts, Root Division, Southern Exposure, Kala Art Institute and the Berkeley Art Center. Erik’s work has been included in publications including New American Paintings, the SF Bay Guardian and the Los Angeles Times. Additionally Erik teaches art, has lectured at universities, given artist talks and has garnered residencies and awards. www.erikparra.com

About state

state is a new visual arts exhibition space in the Mission District of San Francisco. state exhibits contemporary art with an emphasis on Bay Area artists and project-based artwork. state is run by Danielle Smith and Kimberly Verde of FRAMEWORK.

42 in. x 54 in.

Acrylic, Marker and spray paint on canvas

2016

How to Build a Foghorn

Greetings friends. I wanted to let you know that I have been hard at work making some new paintings and three-dimensional paintings (sculptures) that will be part of an installation I will be building, starting later this week! The dust is almost settled and then we can celebrate. I hope that you will be able to join me in LA for the opening, if not I will certainly be posting a lot of images. Please check back for more news. Thank you for your support, as you know, it means the world to me.
Kindly,
Erik Parra

From the Samuel Freeman website:
“Samuel Freeman presents How to Build a Foghorn, an exhibition with Mie Olise, Erik Parra, Craig Kauffman and Bridget Beck. These artists translate the hidden language of the man-made landscape through painting, drawing, printmaking and sculpture. We navigate our daily passage through a subconscious negotiation where expectations are met constantly and unnoticeably, but when the fog rolls in it creates an ambiguous environment without the normal cues for location or definition. The gathered works in How to Build a Foghorn do not so much warn of impending danger as reveal a different understanding of the reality all around us. Expected constructions shape-shift into novel configurations, ships, tree houses, benches and structures, while flowers become skyscrapers who have simply forgotten that scale is a matter of perspective.”

I am excited to announce that I am participating in the upcoming c2c/wc show, “in this place”. If you are around for the opening on Feb. 6th come through! I would love to see you and you can see one of two paintings that I started and completed in 2016!

From the Gallery’s Facebook page: “the artists “in this place” document their personal position in a landscape while creating situations that can experientially teleport a viewer into that space as well. By addressing fundamental apects of how we experience a local environment, such as angle, color, proportions, and the depiction of content, they indicate not only their physical experience of the represented space, but also how they are engaging emotionally and intellectually with their surroundings at that moment as well. This is true whether the work exhibited is a more traditional take on landscape, such as that from Diane Olivier or Kerry Law, or a more conceptual rendition, such as work by Andrew Prayzner or Eilish Cullen. This exhibition also includes artists Robert Minervini, Erik Parra, Chris Ballantyne and Karen Schifano who utilize an approach from a middle ground between these two extremes of practice, which effectively ties the work featured in the exhibition together into a singular comment on the nature of a material existence.

The exhibition will open with a reception on Saturday, February 6 from 6-9pm. It will run through March 6 with gallery hours on Sundays from 12-5pm. c2c project space is at 1695 18th Street #413 in San Francisco (cross streets are Carolina and Arkansas).

mowaV.1 zine release/artist talk

“Join us during Oakland’s First Friday events on January 8th for an artist talk from 7-8pm and a zine release. Erik Parra will be talking about his work in his current solo show “Each Devil His Own” on view at Transmission Gallery through January 23, 2016.”

mowaV.1

Is the beginning of a book project that I started while creating the exhibition currently on view. mowa is a multiple volume, collage based zine that will also be published as hardbound, hand-stitched collection. Please stay tuned to this section for news and connect here for all of the latest news and information.

each devil his own

Transmission Gallery is pleased to present the work of Erik Parra. each devil his own will be an exhibition of paintings, drawings and a site specific installation that draws on tropes of the horrific, mid-century aesthetics and politics to ask questions about the origins of certain current sociopolitical narratives in the vernacular of pictorial construction. In three small series of original compositions Parra conflates his personal history and knowledge with mid-century historical narratives in order to view important, current social concerns through the lens of history. This serves as an entryway into a process of constructing images that draw on our conceptions of space and the stories we tell ourselves in order to navigate the environments we build.

For this exhibition the interior plays host to a range of potential conversations related to aesthetics, politics and history. Central to this exhibition is an examination of postwar historical narratives; such as white flight and the American space program and their challenging effects on contemporary society. Both darkness and lightness are employed to present not only familiar looking interior spaces but also for their expressive narrative effect. Objects within each painted interior are chosen for the potential of their symbolic form to be both simultaneously loaded and banal. This duality then resonates with similar formal choices within the work and drives the potential to open new space to create productive dialogue with the attendant issues. Parra is interested in drawing on our collective cultural memory as informed by the histories of painting, film, aggressive underground music and radical politics in order to paint a critical, collective self-portrait at a very critical time.

Greetings! I have updated the installation section of the site to include @Home,the cool project that I made this past summer while in residence at Project Grant in Buffalo, NY. Through this residency I was able to work with an amazing community to create a really ambitious project.

From the Project Grant website:

“ERIK PARRA arrived on Monday, July 6, from San Francisco, to be an artist in resident for two weeks. Over the course of this time, we hosted Free Drawing and Painting Workshops at the Old First Ward Community Center. The works created became a part of an interactive public sculpture that the community members assisted on with the fabrication and design of. The grand opening of the piece happened for the City of Night Festival, Saturday, July 18, from 6pm-12am….”